Stephen King has been named the author whose work has been banned the most in US books, a new report has highlighted.
PEN America's "Banned in the USA," released on Wednesday, looked into more than 6,800 instances of books being temporarily or permanently pulled for the 2024-2025 school year.
The disturbing number is reportedly down by over 10,000 for the 2023-24 school year.
Around 80% of the book bans came from just three states, Texas, Florida, and Tennessee, that have worked to create laws calling for the removal of books deemed questionable.
Meanwhile, PEN found little or no instances of removals in several other states, with Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey among those with laws that limit the authority of school and public libraries to pull books.
"It is increasingly a story of two countries," noted Kasey Meehan, director of PEN's Freedom to Read program and an author of Wednesday's report.
She added, "And it's not just a story of red states and blue states. In Florida, not all of the school districts responded to the calls for banning books. You can find differences from county to county."
According to a new report, King's books were censored around 206 times, with The Stand and Carrie being among some of his 87 works that were affected.
The most banned work of any author was Anthony Burgess' dystopian classic from the 1960s, A Clockwork Orange, for which PEN found 23 records of removal.
Other books and authors facing extensive restrictions included Patricia McCormick's Sold, Judy Blume's Forever, Jennifer Niven's Breathless, and numerous works by Sarah J. Maas and Jodi Picoult.
Books that were banned had themes including LGBTQ+, race, and sexual violence.
PEN's numbers include the Department of Defence's removal of hundreds of books from K-12 school libraries for military families as part of an overall campaign against DEI initiatives and "un-American" thinking.
In Florida, where more than 2,000 books were banned or restricted, a handful of counties were responsible for many of the King removals.
"His books are often removed from shelves when 'adult' titles or books with 'sex content' are targeted for removal — these prohibitions overwhelmingly ban LGBTQ+ content and books on race, racism, and people of colour — but also affect titles like Stephen King’s books," Meehan said.
PEN's methodology differs from that of the American Library Association, which also issues annual reports on bans and challenges.
The recent report's numbers are much higher in part because the free expression organisation counts any books removed or restricted for any length of time, while the ALA only counts permanent removals or restrictions.
The PEN report includes no banning data from Ohio, Oklahoma, Arkansas and some other states because researchers could not find adequate documentation. Meehan adds that PEN also doesn’t know the full impact of statewide laws.
